UK Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order (International Relations Committee Report)
Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts(4 years, 12 months ago)
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Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
The seismic changes in the world of recent times should not threaten but thrill us. This was the topic I chose to speak on two years ago at an event in Borjomi, Georgia, to a group of young people from the Middle East, the Gulf and the Caucasus. They had gathered to discuss how the shifts in global patterns under way impacted on their respective regions. It was the first time many had reflected on the relationship between their respective areas, with tense political relationships. Not one of the young people who attended came from countries whose establishment or borders were older than three generations. Their families had lived through constant change, but the issue now is whether the changes over recent years are of such an order of difference that our entire concept of foreign policy should also be reflected on.
During the committee’s hearings for this inquiry—I have the privilege to serve on the committee under the noble Lord, Lord Howell—I frequently reflected on that event. Such a large and comprehensive report as this cannot be given full justification in this short time, so I wish to focus on the developmental changes that other noble Lords have referred to, the transformative nature of new technologies, change in this generation and opportunities for the UK in particular.
These changes will probably mean that this is the first generation in whose lives the biggest challenges will be universal in nature, not focused just on people’s own region, country or continent. Climate change, universal rights and obligations, crime and terror networks and cybersecurity worries are by definition no longer only national challenges. The rules-based system—with 75 year-old institutions designed to address a former world and a peacebuilding concept—is in need of reform, but pragmatically the committee said that that is difficult to achieve. We regretted some reform agendas stalling, but I was struck by the comments of the former Foreign Secretary, the noble Lord, Lord Hague, who told us that while he was content for today’s global order to use that 1945 order, it would not be desirable to have it in 2045. I agree with that, and we must start thinking now about how a new world order—a new regime for rule-making—will take its place. This consideration will have to take into account that no previous time in human history has seen such rapid social, economic, technological and political change as that dating from when I was born, in the mid-1970s.
The noble Lord, Lord Soley, referenced population growth. The population of the world has grown from 3.9 billion in 1974 to 7.5 billion today, and is forecast to be 9 billion in 2050. Africa’s population is expected to grow threefold this century. The world economy has grown astronomically—from $5.5 trillion when I was born to $77 trillion, and per capita GDP has grown from $1,400 to $10,300 globally today. This is a marked economic and social development that has also been reflected in improved life expectancy and reduced child mortality. People are more prosperous, healthier and better educated today, and there is an emphasis on social spending. Spending on defence globally has gone down from 3.7% in the year I was born to 2.2%.
Today’s world is in many ways a much smaller one. There were 401 million air passengers in 1997; in 2016, the figure was 3.7 billion. The world is much more closely connected as a result of the internet. Half a trillion text messages are sent every day; there were hardly any in the mid-1990s. These are the most significant changes and outweigh possibly the biggest innovations of previous centuries—John Harrison’s marine chronometer and the establishment of GMT.
Politically, too, there has been progress. The number of countries considered democratic or largely democratic in the year I was born was 34; today it is 87. The number of people living in a largely democratic environment has risen from 1.7 billion to over 4 billion today. This will not necessarily mean, however, that they are stable countries; nor does it mean that there are loyal and sustained identities for people in those countries, many of which exist as a result of decolonisation and the effects of two world wars.
On disruption and change—the title of the first section of the report—what comes with democracy is a belief that the individual is a stakeholder. Democracy establishes a social contract which requires the Government to deliver against the expectations of those who vote them into power. Therefore, the rules-making bodies are even more significant, given that the expectations of the people are much higher. Now, the growth in populations is creating a greater need for services and trained staff in schools and hospitals, and Governments are unable to meet the demands of their peoples.
In addition, trust in state institutions such as broadcasters, statistical bodies and the civil service is coming under increasing pressure—including in the United Kingdom. Populations are becoming less trusting of the United Nations, as is shown in trend data from the Brookings Institution and Pew research.
As we have heard consistently in this debate, both the US and Russia increasingly take a transactional relationships approach in response to these changes. These are huge global shifts, and they take a transactional, state-by-state approach, putting country first—disruption and destabilisation in order to extract advantage. This is inconsistent with what we consider to be the British approach of stability and co-operation to create an environment in which we can gain advantage. In addition, other organisations and structures are growing to challenge the established 1945 order, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, as indicated by the noble Lord, Lord Howell.
Because of these seismic shifts, there is a more conducive environment for benign and malignant non-state actors to thrive. I do not necessarily disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, but a simple reliance on the concept of the nation state does not reflect the changes we have seen in this past generation.
Finally, what can the UK do in response to this? The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, was absolutely right in his devastating critique. If we are to be a leader on cybersecurity threats, the rule of law, progressive trade, the ethics of artificial intelligence, human rights, privacy, generational opportunities, investment for youth, transparency and anticorruption, and to be a lead investor for Africa and a top governance partner on global goal 16, we have to have respect in the world. On a visit to Iraq last year, an MP said that they were watching the Brexit proceedings there every day, and laughing and crying at us—neither are what you want to see as a reflection of British foreign policy.
If we are to take advantage of these changes, perhaps it is as the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, said. His contributions always warm my heart in these debates, and even more so today because he quoted from Memory Hold-the-Door by John Buchan—a former constituent of mine, perhaps, in the Borders—which I quoted in my maiden speech in this House. Buchan said that the Borderer qualities, and those that he admired most in human nature, were,
“realism coloured by poetry, a stalwart independence sweetened by courtesy, a shrewd kindly wisdom”.
I hope that those characteristics will be reflected in our foreign policy in the future.
Yemen: Giving Peace a Chance (International Relations Committee Report)
Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, following the powerful contributions from the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on the humanitarian situation and their personal reflections, the noble Lord, Lord Luce, on the geopolitical situation, the noble Baronesses, Lady Amos and Lady Anelay, on highlighting the failings of a process that is actively excluding the majority of people, women—I will touch on that later—and the noble Lord, Lord Judd, there are limited areas on which I can make an original contribution to this debate. It has been very powerful, even if it has been brief. I have the pleasure, as do others, of serving on the committee so ably chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Howell, and I concur with all of the contributions from my colleagues on the committee today.
I direct the House to my entry in the register of interests. Yesterday afternoon, I returned from a two-country visit to the Middle East. It was said to me then, as others in this debate have remarked, that we have lost with his resignation a Minister who is widely respected, not only in this House but, more importantly, in the region. A week on from his resignation, it is depressing to see there is no Minister for the Middle East to replace him in the Government. It is not acceptable that the Middle East is now covered by a Minister extending the scope of Africa and a Minister extending the scope of Asia. I hope the Minister will give the positive response that the Prime Minister will appoint a Minister for the Middle East as a matter of urgency.
I want to address the first element on which many noble Lords have commented, our arms and defence relationship with Saudi and the UAE. Any reader of the FCO website on GOV.UK will see two articles. The first has the headline:
“Britain has been shaping the world for centuries. That won’t change with Brexit”.
That is immediately followed by:
“Yemen crisis won’t be solved by UK arms exports halt”.
There is a jarring visual element to reading the articles by the Foreign Secretary, not just from looking at the website. I commend the Foreign Secretary for visiting the region, taking a strong special interest in this and supporting Michael Aron, our ambassador for Yemen, and his excellent team based in Amman, who are doing hard work.
The article by the Foreign Secretary said that the “strategic relationship”, by which he means our arms and defence relationship,
“allows us the opportunity to influence their leaders”,
by which he means Saudi Arabia and the UAE. He wrote that, if we stop this relationship, our position would be “morally bankrupt” and we would be bystanders. He gives the impression—in fact he states—that Stockholm would not have happened and we would not have the peace process. That is a regrettable article and it undermines some of the humanitarian work that the UK has provided in that area. As we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, it jars with the position of Germany and the United States Congress.
If countries buy over £5 billion of work from us, most objective people will wonder who provides the influence. Is it the seller or the buyer? There are questions on not just the use of the armaments that we sell but also, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has said, on the down-the-line impact of the training on those weapons and targeted training, and the deeply ingrained relationship we have. It is right for the committee, if not to say it explicitly, to ask for a serious and urgent reconsideration of our defence relationship, given this conflict.
I declare an interest in that I chair the UK board of Search for Common Ground, which has worked in Yemen since 2010, with consistent and active programming throughout the conflict cycles, not only of the last four years, but the last nine years. It has active projects running across seven different governorates, in both north and south, covering stabilisation, countering a culture of violence, conflict sensitivity among the humanitarian sector and trying to support the national peace process. In addition to the UK Government, work there has been supported by diverse UN agencies, USAID and the foreign ministries of the Netherlands and France, among others, showing that it is an international area of consistency. It is also an international shame that this crisis can still exist in the 21st century.
I commend the UK, however, for its government support and humanitarian aid delivery. I would like to see the Government moving beyond a do-no-harm approach to humanitarian assistance and more into the development sphere. From the many visits I made to northern Iraq when Mosul was occupied by ISIS, I saw that insufficient consideration of good governance work post peace process means that those who have been most affected will not be involved in the long-term reconstruction and rehabilitation of communities.
Other noble Lords have mentioned the three-phase process of the UN envoy. Phase one is the redeployment of forces away from Hodeidah. Phase two is a prisoner exchange, which is complex, as I understand there are high-value prisoners from the Saudi side. We know from the situation in Northern Ireland over many years that prisoner exchange is a highly charged and problematic issue. Perhaps we can offer some good lessons on the second area of prisoner exchange. The third phase is for a joint committee for Taiz which, I hope, will meet soon to agree a peaceful way forward.
As indicated by the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, and others, the confidence process is one of incremental stages. If it does not create a degree of momentum, which can be buffeted by wider political considerations of other partners, including Saudi Arabia and Iran, it will be hard to consider what progress is. It would help if the Minister can say what areas of progress the Government consider are sufficiently robust to reassure both sides that there can be movement to the next stage of the peace process.
It is worth putting on record the good offices of the Omani and Jordanian Governments, but I also return to the point mentioned so powerfully by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and others. Over recent years, we have seen the negative impact, both in Iraq and Libya, of processes that exclude women. This does not have an academic element, nor is further research needed. We know for a fact that the majority group has been excluded and that these peace processes are less robust because of it. Even in the last week in Amman, an event took place in which no women participated, contrary to the UN principles indicated by the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins. It may be time for the UK to say to the United Nations that an empty-chair approach could be necessary until women are actively part of the process.
As Mark Lowcock indicated, 24 million people need assistance. A population the size of London will be hungry tonight in that region, and we consider most of those victims to be women. It is simply not acceptable anymore, in how we go about our diplomacy and peacebuilding work, that women are considered a group that deserves to be consulted but not to participate. I hope the Minister says that our approach to look for an opportunity for the participation of women in this peace process before Ramadan will start to see some urgency.
Violent Extremism
Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Purvis of Tweed
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the report of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the British Council Building Young People’s Resilience to Violent Extremism in the Middle East and North Africa, published on 12 December 2017, what are their priorities for preventing and countering violent extremism.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, I declare an interest as an office holder of the All-Party Group on the British Council. I was a member of a sub-committee of the all-party group which worked under the able chair, David Warburton MP, on putting together a report with my colleagues, the noble Baronesses, Lady Hodgson and Lady Suttie, and, for a period, the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, all of whom are in their places. Together we forged a degree of consensus after receiving a great deal of evidence from witnesses, to whom we are grateful. Our report, which was published last year and formally earlier this year, I hope is a contribution to a debate which will continue to be of considerable importance not only for the United Kingdom but for our allies and partners across the MENA region. That work was ably supported by Siobhan Foster Perkins and Zafran Iqbal, who was at the British Council at the time. Without their support we would not have been able to put together our recommendations and conclusions.
Two weeks ago, 8 million children across the Middle East and North Africa sat their end-of-year school exams. Many will have done so after overcoming significant challenges—displacement, poverty, child labour, poor school transportation, overcrowding, lack of teachers and facilities and low-quality education. One in five of all children across the region live in conflict-affected countries. Those children do not only deserve our admiration but consideration of the role we can play to help them grow up in a safe, stable and prosperous region where they can realise their ambitions.
It might be only a tiny proportion of these young people who become violent as a result of being radicalised, but their violent behaviour has an impact on the wider age group across the whole of the region. The all-party group sub-committee therefore considered the best ways of improving resilience among young people to overcome this and whether our government policy needs to be reviewed. I am pleased that the Minister will be responding to this debate. He commands a great deal of respect not only from myself but across all parts of the House.
Nearly a third of the region’s population is aged between 15 and 29, with a further third aged below that. This demographic momentum, therefore, will last for at least two decades. The phenomenon of some young people using violence as an extension of their extreme views may also now be a long-term issue that requires long-term solutions, given the scale of violent conflict affecting the area. The sub-committee found that there was a need for new thinking. However, often the debate has not been helped by casual terminology. While we found a lack of consensus around definitions and language, we settled on the broad descriptions used by the United Nations on countering violent extremism by focusing on the so-called pull factors of the individual and preventing violent extremism by focusing on the so-called push factors of the wider community. However, even that division is too simplistic. We considered carefully whether we have the correct balance between CVE and PVE. We found that without undermining the security considerations of CVE, once extremism has exhibited itself, the balance should rest upon the priority being on PVE to reduce the risk factors in an individual’s capacity and the society’s ability to reduce vulnerability to violent extremism.
Those risk factors within the society fall within three broad areas—economic, civic and social. The economic factors in the region are stark. Research by UNICEF shows that in 11 League of Arab States countries, the under-18 population stands at approximately 118 million, or 6% of the world’s child population. Of those 118 million, 82 million—70%—live in acute or moderate poverty. There is no evidence to make a direct link between poverty and violent extremism. Nevertheless, countries afflicted by conflict and with such acute economic difficulties often present fertile ground where extreme ideology, and those who use it as a tool, can develop. A further complexity is that we know through research that the majority of the most extreme violent young people have educational qualifications. Simply looking at access to education will therefore not be so revealing. Rather, witnesses told the committee that the type and quality of education available to young people in the region was of the greatest importance.
The risk factors associated with the civic sphere are plain to see for anyone visiting the region. Too many young people see their respective Governments as unresponsive, unrepresentative, corrupt and distant. A body of research presented to the sub-committee suggests that this is likely to be a major continuing factor of risk in the region. The state capture of non-state actors is also very present. Social risk factors often receive the most publicity. The simplistic, often verging on the Islamophobic, characterisation of religious radicalism belies complex and multifaceted issues concerning young peoples’ beliefs, identities and loyalties. Work in Tunisia by the peacebuilding charity Search for Common Ground, which we met over there, shows clearly that young people in the region are not a homogeneous group and that drivers for radicalisation are often localised and differ from one community to another.
Given this highly complex set of circumstances in a deeply troubled region, we found that focusing on upstream activity—in other words, on the building of greater strength and capacity in communities and societies, and on the individual herself or himself—is a more effective route to follow than countering it once it has materialised. It is not, however, the straightforward route. The UN Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism states that,
“there is no authoritative statistical data on the pathways towards individual radicalization”.
However, we learned of clear evidence of programmes delivered by the British Council itself or by UK-based or international NGOs where interventions to reduce the risk factors for individuals and the community have worked and are continuing to work. I want to put on record my admiration for DfID’s staff and others within the charity sector who are doing sterling work.
The sub-committee made a number of recommendations which we believe would help build on this work, informed by our witnesses and the evidence we received. Our principal conclusion was that there needed to be scaled-up activity in preventing violent extremism along with better co-ordination of effort by both donor and recipient Governments as well as the international NGO community. This reflects our view that while there are many complexities and cross-overs between the push and pull factors in addressing violent extremism, we believe that the principal focus on investing in building the resilience of communities and the individuals living in them is the most effective way to build the capabilities of young people and the stability of their community, so that they reject the proponents of violent extremism and the ideology which they promote. They can also recover more quickly from violent extremism when it manifests itself in the community or their country.
I cannot do justice to the 28 conclusions and recommendations in the report, nor will I try to rattle them all off for the benefit of the Committee, but I know that neither will the Minister be able to respond in detail to them all today. I wish to highlight some which I feel are important, and I am sure that colleagues will highlight those that they consider to be the most important to them. First, relating to the risk factors within the economic and education systems in the region, we found a need for much greater co-ordination among its education ministries on data, statistics, skills gaps and curriculum reform. We believe that an annual MENA education forum, supported by the British Council and the Government, would have merit.
We also saw many examples of excellent programmes to support young people, but there has been insufficient consideration of how they can be scaled up. That is not easy but it is necessary. In the civic space, we saw that the benefits would be much greater collaboration between NGOs and Governments on the rollout and use of participation programmes, and we suggested consideration of a MENA-wide national citizen service. In the social sphere, we recommended that more work should be done to identify individual risk communities within countries and to share this data.
A recommendation to our Government is that they should set out a clear UK strategy for and approach to preventing violent extremism and offer more clarity on what programmes they fund and why. To address what we found to be the continuing lack of an evidence base on effectiveness, we called for donors to invest more effort into ensuring that programmes are evidence-based and carefully evaluated, with their impact being properly judged, and to publish the lessons learned for future programming.
We argued for much more work on the violent extremism theory of change and seeking consensus based on a much greater level of sharing good practice. To help bring this about, we called for a violent extremism community of practice, and I am delighted that the British Council has accepted this recommendation and will be convening it soon. I hope that the Government will offer their full support. This could be extremely valuable and, I believe, is the first of its kind. We also recommended that the Government should encourage other Governments in the region to commit to a whole-government response rather than the agenda being led by the security or interior ministries. Finally, we believe that all of this could be enhanced by the UK promoting a PVE charter which would show consistency of language and a consensus on the effectiveness of interventions, and would work in parallel with the UN.
I returned from the region at lunchtime today. Every time I visit the area I see small pockets of hope in a deeply troubled region. Those 8 million children who sat their exams will be just as anxious as our children will be later in the summer when they get their results. What our kids take for granted in this country, we should make every effort to ensure that children in the MENA region can also take for granted: a safe, open and tolerant society in which their ambitions can be fulfilled.
UK and the Western Balkans (IRC Report)
Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, whose views I share. I will touch on some of those as regards the UK’s position on Brexit before I turn to my own remarks. It is certainly not my place to answer on behalf of the committee or on our report, but I can assure the noble Lord that our valued colleague on our committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Hilton of Eggardon, shares service in the OSCE parliamentary assembly. She raises the role of the OSCE on a regular basis. When I accompanied her on our split committee visit to Bosnia-Herzegovina and Belgrade, the contribution made by the OSCE was frequently raised by her with those we met.
If the entire western Balkans were one country, its gross domestic product would be about €96 billion, the same as Slovakia and barely over half that of Scotland, while the population would be less than that of Romania. The host of last week’s EU western Balkans summit, the Prime Minister of Bulgaria, Boyko Borissov, asked whether the region represented the “big fear” and whether it is threatening the European Union. Donald Tusk drily responded by saying:
“When it comes to troubles per capita, the western Balkans are much bigger than, for example, Germany and France together”.
During the committee’s deliberations, one witness commented from the sidelines that at the moment we are suffering from a capacity issue within our foreign services. The number of crises that can be managed by our diplomats and officials is now almost at exhaustion. As said by my noble friend Lord Ashdown, given that lives are not regularly being lost, it is understandable—but depressing, in a way—that the eye has been taken off the ball somewhat.
However, the complexities are such that we should continue to see this as not simply a historical lesson, but one for our modern age. I witnessed them quite clearly and reflected them from the thrust of what my noble friend Lord Ashdown has said in previous contributions and writings. I saw first hand a situation where the Government of one country believe that they are the legitimate Government of citizens of another country. That is no different from what we have seen in parts of north Africa and the Middle East. There are common issues—not least those that were debated in the Chamber yesterday on Northern Ireland—and common factors that require us to address this in a much more assertive way. For allowing us to navigate some of these complexities, I pay tribute, as other committee members have done, to our clerking staff, witnesses and specialist adviser, Professor Kenneth Morrison; his knowledge and understanding helped us greatly.
In advance of the inquiry’s commencement, I read my noble friend Lord Ashdown’s diaries of his time as a high representative. Listening to his contribution today, as well as that of the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, it was clear in my mind that we are now at the start of the third phase after the conflict. There was considerable progress in the first decade, there was a decline in the second and we are now at the pivotal stage of making decisions in the third. If President Juncker is correct that the Commission may well be looking at the entry of Montenegro and Serbia at the end of its next period in 2025, it will be doing so on the 30th anniversary of the tragedy. As other committee members have said, and as the underlying warnings in our report’s conclusion suggest, we cannot take this decade of success for granted. Indeed, I hope that the Minister will respond positively to my noble friend’s clear warnings.
I felt that we had two broad themes in the inquiry. The first, which was addressed to me recently by Dr Kate Ferguson of the charity Protection Approaches, is that the last period has been about the inadequacy of our response to not just a post-conflict scenario but a post-trauma one. We are living through that trauma now in the wider Mediterranean and Middle East region. The complexities that we are failing to address now will grow even greater.
Our report’s conclusions broadly endorse the often-quoted observation of my noble friend Lord Ashdown that the Dayton agreement was good for a cessation of violence but not for creating sustainable governance. We have seen limited progress over the past 20 years, primarily in the first decade where there was economic growth and the establishment of tax authorities and other representative bodies. Even though that was as painful as my noble friend indicated, those bodies were nevertheless established and started to function, along with elections and peace.
In the context of world-leading levels of youth unemployment—Bosnia has the highest levels in the world—we are also seeing the state capture of institutions, which is not seen anywhere else on the continent or in the world, and organised crime with tentacles that reach as far as the UK, north Africa and beyond. Only two places in the world have negative development, and one of them is in Europe. Visiting that place allows us to say that the current level of action is not sufficient. As other committee members have indicated, and as is clear in our report, the troubles per capita to which Donald Tusk referred include those associated with state capture, where we continue to see powerful individuals and small groups of individuals monopolise control of state institutions, political parties and state-owned enterprises. On our visit, we saw clearly their malignant influence on the media and the private sector, too.
With 62% youth unemployment in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the brain drain of young people and the level of pessimism outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, one of our more depressing findings was that it is arguably in the elite’s interest that this is not addressed. The state capture thrives on the inadequacy of policy responses which might undermine it, hence the inherent tensions in the debate on EU membership and whether they are in a position where they are likely to meet the requirements of the acquis or whether our intervention levels are now sufficient to allow them to do it. We need to support those at high levels within the western Balkans who see this clearly as a way of developing their own countries.
We met an official from one of highest levels in the Serb Government who said that they need membership of the European Union to save them from themselves. This was a cri de coeur from very serious people who I believe are genuine in their view that European Union membership is critical to the future of their nations. There is a degree of self-awareness there which is undermined by the lack of functioning architecture, as my noble friend Lord Ashdown indicated.
It was therefore no surprise that we saw the Sofia priority agenda agreed last week at the EU western Balkans summit. The top two priorities were tackling corruption and rule of law. However, experts with far more knowledge than me found some of the language used at the summit by key European Union partners slightly confusing. The official summit communiqué expressed,
“unequivocal support for the European perspective of the Western Balkans”.
Let us compare that rather delphic phrase with the declaration of the first EU western Balkans summit in Thessaloniki in 2003, which provided clarity in stating:
“The future of the Balkans is within the European Union”.
President Macron referred only to “anchoring” the western Balkans to Europe. Chancellor Merkel called for a clear membership “perspective”. If I may refer again to my noble friend Lord Ashdown’s diaries—I doubt that it will do book sales any good, because I borrowed it from the House of Lords Library and my noble friend chided me for not buying it—it is clear that what was of assistance in the first decade was there being a British Commissioner, a British Secretary-General of NATO and a British high representative able to communicate freely with authority at every step. That is not there at the moment. Also worrying is the lack of clarity, even from last week. We hope that the UK position can be very clear.
However, how can the UK position be clear on espousing the benefits of European membership when our narrative is almost exactly the reverse? Of course, the United Kingdom has a role in supporting good governance, in security, in transparency in the operation of the media, in fighting corruption and in all the areas in which it can lead—no doubt the Minister will say that is a critical part of the agenda. But how can our fundamental narrative be with regard to the EU as the key driver—on chapter 23 of the acquis, on judiciary and fundamental rights; on chapter 24, on justice, freedom and security—when we are saying that it is not sufficient for the United Kingdom’s future? I hope that the summit will be a success, notwithstanding Britain’s current position in our debate on Brexit.
Finally, the two Members in this debate who have the deepest knowledge and experience, as other Members have said, perhaps gave the most pessimistic view of the future. I see it not necessarily as pessimism but as a realistic warning based on their life experience and their professional judgment. It is not pessimism because both outlined key actions that can be taken to address the situation. I hope the Government will respond and that—with others, particularly the young people we met at the round table and in evidence we received on our committee visit—in the third phase of the post-trauma recovery of this European crisis, the actions taken in London in July will herald a more beneficial third decade than was the second.
Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 2018
Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, this has been a justifiably thorough debate, which not only does justice to the agenda from the Cabinet Office and the Commonwealth Secretariat but to the work of the Minister—I join with Members from across the House who have given credit to his work. I also give credit to the committee, on which I have the privilege to serve under the distinguished chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Howell. Our short report, gladly, is aligned with the Government’s strategy, and there is a degree of consensus.
This debate has also seen us welcome a new Member to our House, the distinguished noble Lord, Lord Geidt. It is always great to have another Scottish Peer who can be utilised. Now that he has a voice after his maiden speech, I am sure that he could bring his extensive diplomatic skills to the devolution clauses in the Brexit withdrawal Bill, which we will need a little diplomacy to work our way through in the coming months.
Lord Purvis of Tweed
I hear the noble Viscount say from a sedentary position that the prospect of taking part in those debates will drive the noble Lord away; it may well do.
My noble friend Lord Chidgey reminded us that we should recall Vanuatu and the difficulties it faces as we welcome our Commonwealth friends to London, because it was due to host the summit. I will return in a moment to the focus we should have on our small and vulnerable Commonwealth states, especially those vulnerable to climate change.
I also endorse the work of the CPA, which is over a century old. I was pleased to host the CPA young representatives in this House on Commonwealth Day and to participate in the parliamentarians’ forum, which has been mentioned.
With the honourable Okechukwu Enelamah, the Minister of Industry and Trade of Nigeria, it has been my privilege to chair a geographically and gender-balanced eminent persons panel for the All-Party Group on Trade Out of Poverty for our inquiry, in partnership with the Overseas Development Institute, which focused on how trade and investment can remove people in the Commonwealth out of poverty. Our report will be published on 3 April. The inquiry was informed by a wide range of witnesses from across the Commonwealth and by many discussions that I had with a large number of Ministers of Trade from Commonwealth countries. The report will be titled “Our Shared Prosperous Future: An Agenda for Values-led Trade, Inclusive Growth and Sustainable Jobs for the Commonwealth”.
The issues of human rights, especially for the LGBT community, capital punishment and press freedom have all been raised in this debate, but I want to focus my remarks on trade and removing people in the Commonwealth from poverty. In essence, our report will make the case for the summit to agree a new agenda for trade and development in the Commonwealth, with a series of recommendations to Commonwealth member countries and the secretariat, and specifically to the UK Government as Chair-in-Office, leading to the next summit in Malaysia and finally to a greater alignment of Commonwealth development to the global goals period leading up to 2030. We hope that our recommendations will form a degree of consensus at the business forum and within the four areas of focus.
We recommend a step change in activity, with more targeted outcomes. It is worth remembering that 13 of the Commonwealth’s members are among the UN’s least developed countries. Nearly one in five people—some 440 million women, men and children—in the Commonwealth live below the international poverty line of $1.90 a day. That is almost twice the global average, so, unless we take action, people born in the Commonwealth today are on average twice as likely to live a life in extreme poverty as people around the world as a whole.
Two-thirds of the world’s small states—states with populations of less than 1.5 million people—are members of the Commonwealth, but in one Commonwealth country, India, the workforce alone is expected to grow by 138 million people by 2030. That shows not only the breadth but the complexity of the Commonwealth. Many of the small states are also highly vulnerable to climate change, as I mentioned. There are immense development challenges but opportunities to utilise the regional networks—the modern Commonwealth, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said—are also present.
We should also recall that two of the G7 and a quarter of the G20 are Commonwealth members. The Commonwealth as a network can lead at all the top tables of the economies around the world and be a conscience, setting the values for the development agenda. We therefore need to see a greatly enhanced cross-regional and cross-country level of participation in removing trade barriers, sharing legislative good practice and supporting wider economic participation. For example, in the World Bank’s flagship index of ease of doing business, which captures a range of barriers, from corruption to bureaucracy at borders, Commonwealth countries ranked first, with New Zealand, but also 77th, with Bangladesh.
Our report focuses on five areas where our many recommendations will fall. The first is reducing the costs and risks of trade and investment. This is where, as we heard from the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, and others, it is necessary for the Commonwealth to work with the WTO and other organisations around the world, assisting the development of trade facilitation support for vulnerable countries.
The second area is boosting services trade through regulatory co-operation, utilising the network characteristics of the Commonwealth and, in particular, its relations with APEC, ASEAN, the OECD and others.
The third area is making trade more inclusive. Quite rightly, we heard about the need for much more work to be done to support not just the Commonwealth’s minorities but, in many respects, the majority, with economic participation by women and of course young people. The report will highlight the secretariat’s SheTrades initiative, although scaling that up is critical. Quite frankly, the Commonwealth will not be relevant in the future if it does not focus on young people’s and women’s fair participation across the piece—at the political and business levels and in society. We are also proposing a Commonwealth fair and sustainable trade initiative, capturing not only fair trade and values but also the spirit of the Commonwealth charter in the way businesses trade.
The fourth area is addressing the special needs of small and vulnerable states, as I have mentioned.
The fifth and final area is strengthening partnerships, through Governments, business and diaspora in particular. We need to move away from looking at the Commonwealth diaspora as one that simply sends remittances back to countries and instead see it as a network within each of the Commonwealth countries that can enhance our shared agenda—and of course including the valuable role of the CPA. There should also be a greater focus on co-ordinating regulations, standards and capacity. We cannot forget that many of our Commonwealth countries have a very weak capacity as regards trade ministries and development ministries, and the larger and more developed economies can focus much more on that.
Finally, we also want to see values-led trade. I had the good fortune, through the support of the CPA, to attend the ministerial conference MC11 for the WTO in Buenos Aires last year, meeting many Commonwealth members. Perhaps it is the zeitgeist of the moment, and CHOGM can meet this time, when we focus, not only on trade, finance and economic co-operation but on that which is based upon values and a conscience. The Commonwealth is not, nor should it be, nor will it ever be, a rules-making forum. But it can do more to co-ordinate on an equal basis the least developed and the most developed, the smallest and the largest, in a consensual manner, with mutual respect, to make sure that the rule-making bodies around the world operate better. We should eschew the idea of country first and wealth for the few, and replace it with a commonwealth for all in the world.
Middle East (IRC Report)
Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts(6 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, I refer noble Lords to my entry in the register of interests and to the more than 20 visits over the past year or so that I have made to the region. The title of this debate and the report call for a time of new realism. The speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Stone, suggests that we also should not totally lose sight of idealism, but it is very hard, given the fact that the first three and a half minutes of the chairman’s speech were taken up simply listing the atrocities, conflicts and tensions that exist within the region.
Over the weekend, I was in my home area in the Scottish Borders and there was a festival at Galashiels Braw Lads that marked ceremonies that took place on the Tweed in 1503 on the marriage between the English and Scottish royal families. The war between the two countries continued and peace was fragile for centuries still.
Modern Arab history started with the Ottoman conquests in 1516-17. Regions have long folk memories—and conflict-afflicted areas have significantly long folk memories. From the end of the Ottoman conquests to the end of the First World War, when western powers staked claims, then to the Cold War and the growth of Arab nationalism and Baathism, and now more recently a region convulsed by intrareligious tension and desires for liberties from the rule of hierarchical and closed systems of powers, we are seeing a major instability, as the committee report states and as the chairman so ably outlined. The birth of modern Arab history also saw the end of rule by themselves for four centuries. The global power bases of Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo were replaced by Istanbul, then London and Paris. The fall of the Ottoman empire a century ago heralded a century of flux, and on the anniversary of that we are now facing a century to come where we have few answers and, in many respects, few hopes.
We are perhaps in the first decade of a new period of the regional history. The failure in many respects of the nation state and the removal of a regional order is to be replaced by the birth of a technological century focused on young people—but young people with fewer opportunities ahead of them than previous generations, with record levels of unemployment and the ability for technology to spread fake news and extreme ideology as well as the positive elements of their own societies.
We have to take stock and it is right that we debate what role Britain can play in the century to come. We cannot wipe clean our history within the region, nor should we be restricted by it. I commend the committee staff and our policy adviser for helping us consider the areas we should be focusing on in the next century.
We start from considerable UK interests in the region. As the chairman said, our annual trade with the GCC states is worth a hefty £38 billion; British Armed Forces are involved in both Syria and Iraq as part of the coalition against the hideous Daesh; and humanitarian assistance from the UK is second only to the US, with over £2.3 billion committed. It is saving lives every day of every week and we should be proud of it. Our staff in the region are doing sterling work. NGOs from the United Kingdom are also doing fantastic work. As Boris Johnson alone says—he likes to be quoted in regard to our relationship with Qatar—they own the Shard, the Olympic Village, Harrods and Chelsea Barracks, and London City Hall is owned by Kuwaitis. The list goes on and shows the depth of our relationship, not only in military and diplomatic but also in economic ties. However, I detect that there is a greater enthusiasm from the Government to highlight the economics and the trade rather than a wider interest in the political and social relationships within the region, and that that is likely to be the focus as we enter a new post-Brexit scenario.
Given the breadth and complexity of the current position, we could dedicate days of debates on each of the different individual issues—on Syria, on the Israel-Palestine question, on Iraq and the future of that country, on security in the eastern MENA and Maghreb region, on the Gulf tensions and the relationship between Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia, not to mention the incoherence of US policy and the aggression of Russia. All these issues warrant deep and careful consideration, so inevitably we must limit ourselves in this short debate to observing a number of issues and making recommendations.
I have some sympathy with the Government’s response to the committee. They argue that because there is so much complexity there is no one single solution nor one single approach. I welcome the Government’s response that we now have a one Whitehall approach on the Middle East, as they put it. I cannot speak for other members of the committee, only for myself, but I was not able to witness that within the evidence the Government presented to the committee. I hope that at least, if nothing else, we have stimulated some focused thinking within Whitehall.
The Government cite regularly our P5 status in the Security Council, our unique history in the region, our EU membership, up until now, and our very close ties with the United States. But with this comes responsibility. I hope the Government are taking seriously the observation from the committee that the UK has had an inconsistent approach and lacks vision, because it was meant with great sincerity. I agree with the consensus of the committee in its recommendation that the role we wish to play in the region needs fresh, forward-looking thinking—one that should focus almost relentlessly on the next generation of young people, in addition to their relationships with their nation states. We can at least enhance the next generation’s view of us and what we represent as a country, our values and interests. The problems are complex and multifaceted, but as Chris Doyle of CAABU put it:
“British Middle East policy has never been consistent or even ethical. And that is almost certainly an unrealistic goal, but it should aspire to narrow the gap between perceived interests and its proclaimed values, though it has to be clearer what both are in the first place”.
In a much-lauded speech in December last year on the UK being back east of Suez, the Foreign Secretary said that,
“any crisis in the Gulf is a crisis for Britain—from day one; that your security is our security and that we recognise the wisdom of those who campaigned for a policy of engagement east of Suez—that your interests military, economic, political—are intertwined with our own”.
If we are back east of Suez, the test most surely would have been in the current tension within the GCC, but where has the UK been on this to seek a resolution? With inconsistency from the US, which the chairman alluded to, and inaction from the State Department we simply must draw the conclusion that the Foreign Secretary’s speech was, if not irrelevant, certainly a considerable overstatement. I suggest that there is scope for a London conference, where we would use our pretty considerable relationships in the region to seek not only a temporary solution but a deep solution addressing deep and complex relationships between the two.
On Syria, we detected inconsistency. That was highlighted simply in the Foreign Secretary’s session with us: at the beginning of the session, he had a policy, but it had altered by the end. The Government’s response to the committee adds a little more clarification, but not wholesale. On Syria-Palestine, our recommendations are clear, and I hope that the Government will give an equally clear recommendation.
In my final moments I wish to address the humanitarian crisis that is afflicting the region. We have migration in the region, perhaps even more than during the Lachish campaign 3,000 years ago—it is an unprecedented historical crisis. In last week’s Queen’s Speech debate, I asked the Government whether the international community was meeting its objectives for raising the funds. Last year, the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, stated that £12 billion had been raised in one day; the largest amount ever for a humanitarian crisis. Last week, the Minister told me there was £8 billion and only £6 billion has been allotted. I hope he can provide clarification.
The committee report deserves cold, realistic reflection. I hope that this debate will be the start of that and that the Government will continue to give it due consideration.